My Personal Experience Before Getting a Romanian and Polish Passport

A few years ago, while still traveling on my Canadian passport, I landed in Stockholm, Sweden as part of a ten day Eurotrip with a friend. I was jet lagged, grumpy, and wanting nothing more than to get to the hotel and lie down for a few hours after arriving in the early morning. The last thing I wanted was a long immigration line, especially since I'd already filed both my Polish and Romanian citizenship applications by that point. I found myself stuck in a line for almost an hour and a half, feeling helpless, with a real fear-of-missing-out feeling, wishing I already had one of those EU passports in hand. To my right, I watched people with EU passports breeze through with no line at all, while only two immigration booths were open for the rest of us.

On the last day of the trip, a different kind of stress hit me. I'd arrived at the Munich airport a reasonable three hours ahead of my flight, and I still found myself worrying whether I'd make it. You don't just wait in a security line in airports like Munich, but you also have to clear a separate immigration line to exit the European Union regardless of where you depart from. That line ran about an hour. And after that, you still have to show your passport again before boarding, in a final check after "clearing EU exit customs." The whole thing was exhausting. Once again, all I could think was how much easier it would have been to already have that Polish or Romanian passport in hand, while the EU passport holders next to me walked straight through.

North America: Global Entry, NEXUS, Pre-Check, Clear

In North America, we have trusted traveler programs like Pre-Check, Global Entry, and NEXUS, plus corporate programs like Clear, which can be combined with Pre-Check for even faster screening at airports and, increasingly, at stadiums for sporting events and concerts. Global Entry and NEXUS are the US and Canadian versions of the same idea, and both include Pre-Check as a bonus. You skip the line, scan your biometrics at a kiosk, and walk up to an officer only if you need to declare something. If you travel often, domestically or internationally, it genuinely changes how you move through an airport, and a lot of premium credit cards already include it.

What the EU Doesn't Give You, Unless You're a Citizen

Here's what none of those premium cards cover: the European equivalent. Fly into Italy from North America and you'll clear customs and immigration for both Italy and the EU on arrival, and the lines can be a real gamble. I've personally stood in lines over an hour and a half long, and I've heard worse from other travelers. It doesn't stop at arrival either. You also have to exit the EU when you leave, which might mean clearing out through Germany after backpacking through Italy, France, and Germany on your way home.

It's gotten more involved recently, too. The EU's new Entry/Exit System went fully live on April 10, 2026, replacing the old manual passport stamp with mandatory biometric registration, fingerprints and a facial scan, for every non-EU traveler, on both entry and exit, across the Schengen Area. There have already been real, reported delays since it rolled out.

Skipping the Line With an EU Passport

A Polish or Romanian passport (both EU countries) gets you something close to a free version of what Global Entry and NEXUS give you back home. EU passport holders go through a separate line on arrival, skip the long non-EU line entirely, scan their passport and biometrics, and walk through, usually without saying a word to anyone.

There are plenty of other benefits to holding an EU passport, and I'll get into those in another post here on the European Roots Consulting blog. But this one is the benefit nobody warns you about until you're standing in that line yourself, jet lagged, watching someone else walk past you in thirty seconds while you've still got an hour to go.

None of this requires living in Europe, or even traveling there often. It just requires having the passport. If you think you might have Polish or Romanian ancestry, even a few generations back, I built a quick eligibility quiz that's the fastest way to find out if that's true for you and your family too.

When I started my own Romanian citizenship by descent process, I did what most people do first. I asked a lawyer. The quote came back: $5,000 per person, for a family application. And that number didn't include the real costs underneath it. Apostilles, certified translations, shipping, even additional Zoom calls beyond the included allotment. All extra, all on top.

For Poland, I never even got that far. I researched the firms, saw some charging $10,000 per person, others in the $6,000 to $7,000 range across the US, Canada, and Poland itself, and decided to figure it out myself.

So I did. Both countries, start to finish, no lawyer. This post is about what the process actually costs, because that number and the law firm quote are two very different things.

The Quote vs. the Reality

Here's the part nobody explains up front. A law firm's fee buys their time and expertise. It does not cover the underlying costs of the process itself. Translations, apostilles, archive and certificate fees, government filing fees, couriers. Those exist whether you hire a lawyer or not, and you pay them either way. The lawyer's fee sits on top of all of it. My Romanian quote made that explicit: $5,000 was the professional fee, and everything the process actually requires was extra.

In my experience, and across the cases I now work on, those third-party costs typically run somewhere around $500 to $1,500 USD for most cases. Document-heavy cases can run higher. But that's the real cost of the process. The thousands on top are professional fees.

That gap is the whole reason this business exists.

What I Didn't Know Going In

Two things caught me off guard in my own applications, and they catch almost everyone.

First, the translator situation. Most people assume they can use a translator near where they live. It feels logical. It's where you are, it's where most of your documents are. For the Polish application especially, the reality is different, and it's one of the most misunderstood parts of the entire process. The type of translator required, and where that translator needs to be based, depends on the document. Get it wrong and there's a fee waiting for you at the consulate that nobody warned you about. I know because it happened to me. Fixing it costs real money and real time.

Second, the per-applicant math. If you're filing as a family, each adult application is its own application. Its own fees. Its own document requirements, even when the ancestral chain is shared. I went through this alongside my brother and my father, so I've lived the multi-applicant version personally. Families routinely underestimate their total cost because they assume everything can simply be shared across applications. Some of it can. Knowing which parts is where the real savings live, and it's exactly what I map out on a Roadmap Call, because the answer depends on your specific document set.

Romania Adds Its Own Layer

Romania's process has its own cost structure and its own category of surprises. The biggest is the B1 Romanian language requirement introduced in 2025, which I've covered separately on this blog.

One more that almost nobody flags: if you file at a consulate in a city where you don't live, or your documents come from a different country than where you file, the translator certification requirements get more complicated than a purely local case. Most people find this out mid-process, when a document gets flagged. That's the expensive way to learn it.

So What Does It Actually Cost?

The honest answer, in three tiers:

If you do a Roadmap Call and handle everything yourself: third-party costs plus $299 for the call. You leave with a written plan, the exact document list in the right order, and a line-item estimate of your third-party costs before you spend a dollar.

If you want the Guided Process: $1,500 plus third-party costs. I walk you through exactly what to do at every step, in the right order, and check your work before you take it. You execute, including the document gathering, with me making sure nothing gets done twice or done wrong.

If you want it Done For You: $3,250 plus third-party costs. With your authorization, I handle the document gathering across every generation and country, the apostilles, the sworn translator sourcing, the genealogist coordination where archives are involved, and the consulate-ready package. You approve each step, sign what needs signing, and show up to your appointment. Law firm quotes I've personally received for comparable work have run several times this price.

And here's the part a sales page wouldn't tell you. Some cases genuinely need a lawyer. I'm not one, and I don't give legal advice. If your case involves a real legal dispute, a prior denial, or eligibility that's genuinely unclear under the law, a licensed immigration attorney is the right call, and I'll tell you that directly if I see it in your situation. A good consultant tells you when you're outside his lane. That's part of what you're paying for.

Where to Start

The thing most people don't realize until they're deep in it: this process is genuinely navigable without a law firm, but only if you know the specific traps before you hit them. The Roadmap Call is 45 minutes on your specific family situation, the exact documents you need in the right order, and an honest answer on whether your case is standard or lawyer territory. It's $299, and it typically saves people multiples of that in mistakes they never make. If you're not sure you're eligible at all, the quiz on this site is the faster place to start, and it'll tell you whether a Roadmap Call even makes sense yet.

The day I walked into the Polish consulate in Toronto, I was carrying three applications. Mine, my brother's, and my father's. Two years of research, foreign archives, translations, and dead ends, compressed into a folder handed across a desk. It didn't feel triumphant. It felt like relief. And almost immediately, I started thinking about everything I would have done differently if I'd known on day one what I knew standing at that counter.

This post is the honest version of the Polish citizenship by descent process. Not the idealized one.

What the Process Actually Involves

The shape of it is simple to describe and hard to execute. You establish the lineage. You identify and request the right documents, sometimes from archives in other countries. You get everything authenticated and translated correctly. You assemble the application, file at the right consulate, and then you wait for Poland to decide.

About that waiting: don't skip past it. Confirmation decisions are issued by the competent voivode in Poland, and decisions are measured in years, not months. Anyone who promises you a specific timeline is guessing, and you should be suspicious of anyone in this space who guarantees one. Approval, and its timing, is always at the discretion of the Polish authorities.

Here's the framing that helped me: you're planting a tree. The applications in the system today take the time they take either way. Filing now means being in the queue now. Waiting to start means waiting twice.

The Translator Problem

If I could only warn you about one thing, it would be this.

Most people treat translation as a simple line item. Find a translator, pay them, attach the document. The Polish application has specific requirements around translator qualification and translator location that aren't clearly explained anywhere, and they depend on which documents you're translating. Assume you can use a translator based in North America for everything and you'll likely pay to undo that assumption. I did. There's even a separate fee at the consulate that exists specifically to catch people who got this wrong, and I found out about it the expensive way.

Which documents need which type of translator, where that translator needs to be based, and how to structure the work so you're not paying twice is exactly the kind of thing I walk through on a Roadmap Call, because the answer depends on where your documents come from.

The Sequencing Mistake Almost Everyone Makes

The order in which you request, authenticate, and translate your documents matters far more than any guide suggests. Do things in the wrong sequence and you end up either paying for work you have to redo, or waiting months longer than you needed to because one step was quietly blocking three others.

There is a smarter sequence. I found it by getting it wrong first. You don't have to.

The Post-Approval Costs Nobody Warns You About

Most content about this process stops at the application, because most people writing about it have never gotten further than that. Here's what they're missing: a positive decision is not a passport.

After approval, there are additional steps before a Polish passport is in your hand. They involve additional certified documents, additional government processes, and real additional time. There are two different paths through this phase, and they have meaningfully different timelines and tradeoffs. Plan for this phase to add months, not weeks, and to carry its own costs.

I'm deliberately not detailing the steps here, because the right path depends on your situation, and this phase is where I see people lose the most time after doing everything else right.

The One Thing I Wish I'd Known on Day One

Filing as a family is a different experience than filing alone, and nobody talks about it. When you file for yourself, a mistake costs you. When you're the one who found the eligibility, did the research, and assembled the applications for your brother and your father too, every uncertainty weighs three times as much. You become the project manager of your family's paperwork, and there's no one above you to check your work. If you're about to become that person for your family, know that going in. It's worth it. It's also heavier than you expect.

Where to Start

The process is genuinely manageable if you know what you're walking into before you start. Almost every expensive mistake I made, and almost every one I now see other people make, happened in the first few weeks, before they understood what the application actually required. The Roadmap Call is where those mistakes get prevented. 45 minutes, your specific family situation, and a clear written plan you leave with. If you're serious about this, that's the place to start. And if you're not yet sure you qualify at all, take the quiz on this site first. It'll tell you whether the call makes sense.

One applicant I've worked with filed his Romanian citizenship application shortly after the law changed.

Law 14/2025, which introduced a B1 Romanian language-proof requirement for citizenship by descent applicants, took effect on March 15, 2025. He filed not long after. The consulate where he filed told him, verbally and then in writing, that B1 proof was not required for his application. The law, read plainly, suggested it might be. Two authorities, two answers, one file. Navigating exactly that kind of contradiction is a real part of what I do, and his situation is the clearest picture I can give you of what this requirement actually means in practice.

What the Law Actually Says

Law 14/2025 took effect on March 15, 2025. It introduced a B1-level Romanian language certificate requirement for citizenship applicants under Article 10 and Article 11, which covers most citizenship by descent cases.

Since then, Emergency Ordinance 16/2026 extended the deadline for affected applicants to submit their B1 proof to March 2027. That extension is real and it matters, but it's a deadline extension, not a repeal.

Two exemptions worth knowing: applicants who previously held Romanian citizenship themselves, and applicants who are 65 or older.

Say it plainly: this is a real requirement with a real deadline. It is not bureaucratic noise, and it is not going away because people find it inconvenient.

The Administrative Gray Zone: What If the Consulate Gave Different Guidance?

This is the question most people searching this topic actually need answered.

If you filed before March 15, 2025, you are likely exempt. Confirm that in writing with the consulate where you filed. Don't rely on a verbal answer.

If you filed after March 15, 2025, the legislation establishes the B1 requirement for your application and provides a transition period for submitting proof, so the statutory rule itself is not undefined. The uncertainty some applicants encountered, including the applicant above, came from inconsistent or delayed consular guidance about how that rule would be applied to their specific file, not because the law left the question open.

I won't promise anyone an outcome, because nobody honestly can. What I can tell you from working through this: the consulate where you file is not the final authority. The National Citizenship Authority in Bucharest is. What the consulate tells you matters, and how you document what they tell you matters even more. In the case above, we didn't just accept the consulate's answer and hope. We built a documented basis for his position, and separately prepared for the exam anyway, so the file is protected whichever way Bucharest reads it. That documentation strategy is one of the most valuable things I cover on a Roadmap Call, because it's the difference between hoping you're fine and having a written record if it's ever questioned.

The Exam Options, Briefly

If the requirement applies to you, there's more than one way to get the certificate: official language institutes that offer remote testing, and select Romanian universities that administer accredited exams.

They differ meaningfully on cost, availability, and how fast you can realistically get from deciding to take the exam to holding a result. I won't rank them here, because the right choice depends on your timeline and situation, and it's exactly the kind of thing I help clients sort out directly. One honest thing worth saying publicly: don't leave this until close to your deadline. Waiting has real, avoidable costs.

The Translator Problem, Which Is Different From Poland's

Romania has its own translator certification requirements, and they interact in a non-obvious way with geography. If you file at a consulate in a city where you don't live, or some of your documents originate in a different country than where you filed, the certification requirements for your translations get more complex than a purely local case. Nobody explains this clearly anywhere, and it usually only surfaces mid-process, when a consulate flags a document as insufficiently certified. It's fixable. It's much cheaper to avoid.

If You Just Found Out You Might Be Eligible

Three honest things, for the person reading this at 11pm wondering where they stand.

One: the B1 requirement is real, but there are paths through it, and whether it applies to you depends on when and how you file, or filed.

Two: if the exam applies to you, it's passable with focused preparation. It's a barrier to people who treat it as an afterthought, not to people who take it seriously. I've been deep in Romanian language preparation myself, so I can tell you firsthand the jump to B1 is very achievable with a real plan.

Three: the exam is not the first step. The first step is knowing whether your lineage actually qualifies under Article 10 or Article 11. Studying for an exam you don't need is wasted time. Not studying for one you do need is a real risk. Get the eligibility answer first.

That eligibility answer, your timing, and what you should be documenting right now is exactly what the Roadmap Call covers. 45 minutes, your specific situation, and an honest read on where you stand.

My cousins on my mother's side recently had two babies. Both of those children, before they could hold their own heads up, already held German passports, through the other side of their family.

They have no idea what they have. They won't for years. But something has already been quietly decided for them: where they can study, where they can work, whether a rejected visa application will ever stand between them and an opportunity anywhere across 27 countries. Nobody will have to explain a lineage, chase a document through a foreign archive, or wait years for a decision on their behalf. It's done. It just sits there, waiting for the moment it matters.

That, more than anything else, is the actual reason most people pursue European citizenship by descent. Not for themselves, necessarily. For the people who come after them.

The People I Actually Know Who Are Living Some Version of This

This isn't theoretical for me, and not just because of my own Polish and Romanian journey. Look around my own life and you'll find the whole spectrum of what a European passport does and doesn't change.

A former colleague of mine went through citizenship by descent for Germany, through her grandfather, a Holocaust survivor. Germany has a specific restoration pathway for descendants of people it persecuted, and she used it, then moved to Germany full-time. Her process worked. It also ran through an expensive lawyer, which is its own lesson, and a familiar one if you've read my post on what this actually costs.

A former coworker was born in Greece, an EU citizen from birth, and splits her year between the US and Greece. No visa, no permit, no countdown clock. She just goes, and stays, and works, because the passport in her drawer says she can. Watching her move between two continents like it's a commute is the clearest picture I have of what freedom of movement actually means day to day.

And then there's the contrast case, which might be the most instructive one. A coworker from Alberta spends the cold half of the year in Spain. Spanish boyfriend, snowbird life, winters in the sun. But she's there on a remote worker visa. Which means her life in Spain runs on a clock: renewals, conditions, paperwork, and the standing possibility that a rule change or a denied renewal ends the arrangement. She's living a version of the dream. She's also living proof of the difference between being allowed to be somewhere and having the right to be there.

Same continent, three completely different footings. That's the point. A European passport isn't about one lifestyle. It's about which of these positions you, or your kids, get to occupy when life presents the opportunity.

What's Actually Different Over There, As Far As I Can Tell

I haven't lived in Europe, so I won't pretend to firsthand authority here. But the people above tell a consistent story, and it matches what's widely reported about EU norms generally: more paid vacation as a legal baseline, parental leave measured in months rather than weeks, and healthcare access that isn't tied to staying in a particular job. None of them describe it as paradise. All of them describe the default settings of daily life as different in ways that compound.

I'm not telling you Europe is better. I'm telling you the people I know who have the right to find out for themselves have not regretted holding it.

Why the Newborns Matter More Than the Snowbirds

Here's the distinction I keep coming back to. The adults above made active choices, weighing tradeoffs as grown people. My cousins' newborns chose nothing. They simply received an option, secured by someone a generation or two before them.

That's what citizenship by descent actually is once it's done: it stops requiring anything. The next generation doesn't redo the paperwork, retrace the lineage, or requalify. They just have it. University at EU citizen rates instead of international rates. The legal right to take a job in any of 27 countries without sponsorship. The ability to move for love, for opportunity, or for no particular reason at all, with no renewal date and no one's permission.

A door that stays open for a family long after the person who did the paperwork is gone.

This Isn't a Verdict on Where You Live Now

Worth saying plainly: none of the people I've described left because their lives were falling apart. They made choices from a position of having options. And most people who go through this process never relocate at all. They hold the option the way my cousins' newborns now do, without it requiring a single thing from them.

That's the honest pitch. Not "move to Europe." Just: the option costs nothing to hold, and not having it puts everything on someone else's clock.

Find Out If the Door Exists for Your Family

I think about those two babies a lot when I talk to people about this. Somebody, at some point, did the work that put those passports in their tiny hands. If you have Polish or Romanian ancestry, even a few generations back, you might be in a position to be that somebody for your family. The quiz on this site is the fastest way to find out whether the door exists at all, and if it does, the Roadmap Call is where we map exactly how to walk through it.

There was a marriage certificate I needed for my Polish citizenship application, and I had almost nothing to go on.

A Marriage I Couldn't Place

The person who would have known the details, my grandmother, was ailing and couldn't remember them. There were no photos of the wedding. No family records of it at all. I knew the marriage happened somewhere in Canada, and that was roughly the extent of it. Try requesting a vital record from a country when you can't tell them which province to look in. That's not a form you fill out. That's a search.

Then a Birth Certificate That Didn't Actually Exist Yet

While that search was going nowhere, a second problem surfaced. My grandmother's birth certificate, another document the application needed, turned out not to exist in the way I assumed it did. She was born on a farm in Saskatchewan, and her birth had to be formally registered with the province before a certificate could even be issued. I'd budgeted for "order a birth certificate." What I actually had was a registration process standing in front of the document standing in front of the application.

And a Name That Didn't Agree With Itself

And underneath both of those, the name problem. My great-grandfather's records didn't agree with each other. The spelling on the documents from the old country didn't match his Canadian naturalization papers, which didn't quite match the name my family actually used, which didn't match the passenger manifest I'd found earlier and had been quietly treating as my anchor. A Ukrainian spelling, a Polish spelling, a Canadian spelling, all describing the same man, feeding an application process that runs on documents agreeing with each other.

So that was my desk. A marriage I couldn't place, a birth that legally hadn't been registered yet, and an ancestor whose name changed depending on which country's paperwork I was holding.

I want to be honest about what that stretch felt like, because nobody was honest with me about it. It didn't feel like a process with a next step. It felt like evidence I was doing something wrong. Like people who actually knew what they were doing didn't end up here.

The Low Point: Wiring Money Into a War Zone on the Strength of an Email

Then came the heaviest piece. Some of the documents I needed only existed, if they existed at all, in a regional archive in Ukraine. An archive that doesn't accept payment from abroad. In a country at war. The only realistic path was hiring a genealogist on the ground, a stranger I'd never met, and wiring him real money on the strength of an email thread. I remember hovering over that transfer. Not because the amount would ruin me, but because of everything it sat on top of: I still couldn't place the marriage, the birth registration was still in progress, I still didn't know which version of my great-grandfather's name would hold up, and now I was sending money into a war zone hoping a person I'd never met would mail me the one set of documents I couldn't get any other way.

That was the low point. Not one crisis. Three, at the same time, with money on the line and no certainty on any of them, and no one to tell me which one to worry about first. I'll say this plainly: I think most people would have given up right there. I nearly did. It's a big part of why the Polish application took me as long as it did.

Nothing Resolved in the Order I Expected

None of it resolved the way I expected, or in the order I expected.

The Ukrainian documents came first. The genealogist turned out to be exactly who he said he was. Certified records, properly issued, tracked delivery, in my hands while the Canadian problems were still open. The thing I'd been most afraid of resolved before the things I'd assumed were routine.

The marriage eventually surfaced too. Nova Scotia. A province no family story pointed to, half a country from where I'd been looking. Once I knew where to look, the certificate itself was the easy part. The wild goose chase was everything before that.

And the name problem, the one that felt most fatal? It mattered less than I feared. Not because it disappeared, but because once enough supporting documents existed, the variations could be explained and documented rather than hidden. Name variants across borders and alphabets are common in these applications. There are established ways to address them. I just didn't know that yet, alone at my desk, staring at three spellings of one man.

What I'd Tell You If You're in the Middle of This Right Now

If you're in the middle of your own version of this right now, with an unanswered archive email in one tab, a quote you're not sure about in another, and a relative who can't remember the detail everything depends on, here's what I wish someone had told me: the chaos is not a sign you're failing. It's just what this process looks like from the inside. The hardest part of doing this alone was never any single problem. It was carrying three unresolved uncertainties at once with no one to triage them with.

That's what European Roots Consulting actually is. On the Guided Process, I walk you through exactly what to do at every step, in the right order, so the goose chases end before they start. On Done For You, the archive emails, the genealogist coordination, the provincial registrations, all of it becomes my problem instead of yours. Either way, the version of this story where you almost give up alone at your desk doesn't have to be your version. Start with the Roadmap Call, and bring me your tangle.

One of the applicants I've worked with has an email from a Romanian consulate stating that the B1 Romanian language exam was not required for his citizenship application. He filed not long after Law 14/2025, the law that introduced that exact requirement, took effect on March 15, 2025.

Here's the sentence this whole post hangs on: a written assurance from a consulate and the text of the law it's supposed to reflect don't always say the same thing. And when they don't, most applicants never notice until it's far too late to do anything about it.

He Had the Email. We Also Had the Legislation.

He didn't just rely on what the consulate told him. Together, we went to the source: the actual legislation and the coverage around Law 14/2025. And the law, as written, read plainly, may have applied to his filing date. The people telling him it didn't apply may simply not have caught up yet with their own government's new law.

So he was holding two things at once. A written assurance from the people whose job it is to know the answer. And the primary source, which said: maybe not.

I want to describe that position precisely, because if you go through this process you will likely meet it yourself. It isn't panic. It's a specific, quiet unease that comes from being told "you're fine" by an authority while the document in front of you says "possibly not." Most people resolve that tension by choosing to believe the reassuring answer. We chose not to resolve it. We treated both as live possibilities and planned for each.

What that case teaches is structural, not personal: the people communicating with applicants day to day are not always the same people who are fully briefed on legislative changes the moment they happen. That's not an accusation against anyone at any consulate. It's just how large government systems work when a law moves faster than internal communication does.

This Is Normal, and That's Exactly the Problem

This isn't a story about one consulate being disorganized. It's a story about what happens almost everywhere when a rule changes. The people on the front lines, the ones applicants actually talk to, often don't have updated guidance for weeks or months. Sometimes their guidance contradicts another consulate's guidance about the same law in the same window. In the months after Law 14/2025 took effect, that's exactly what applicants across different consulates reported.

Which leads to the uncomfortable conclusion: if you're waiting for an official, unambiguous, well-communicated signal that a window is closing before you act, that signal usually doesn't arrive in time to matter. By the time everyone agrees on what changed, the change already happened, and the people who acted early are the ones who filed under the old rules.

This Has Already Happened in Other Countries

I cover this in more depth elsewhere on this blog, so briefly: Italy moved to sharply restrict its historically open citizenship by descent program, with a decree that took effect essentially overnight. Hungary requires a language interview for its descent pathway. Romania added the B1 language-proof requirement. The direction across Europe's citizenship by descent programs over the last few years is one direction, and it isn't toward more access.

What We Actually Did About It

We didn't take the assurance, verbal or written, at face value and move on. We took specific steps to document and protect his position, so that if the National Citizenship Authority in Bucharest, the body that actually decides, ever reads his timeline differently than the consulate did, he isn't standing there with nothing but a memory of a conversation. And separately, we treated the exam as if it might apply anyway, so no deadline could sneak up on the file.

I'm not going to lay out those steps here, partly because the right version of them depends on your specific dates and correspondence, and partly because this is genuinely some of the highest-value ground I cover with clients.

But the principle is public and it's the point of this post: there is a difference between hoping you're fine and having a documented basis for your position if it's ever questioned. When a rule changes around your application, you want to be in the second category. Most people don't find out which category they're in until it's too late to switch.

Where This Leaves You

Rule changes in this space don't announce themselves clearly, and the people meant to explain them are often still catching up themselves. That's not a reason to panic. It's a reason to act while your eligibility is clear and to paper your position as you go.

If you think you might be eligible for Romanian or Polish citizenship, the Roadmap Call is where we figure out exactly where your timing stands, and what, if anything, you should be documenting right now to protect yourself later. I've done it for my own family's files and for clients caught in exactly the gray zone above. I'll show you how to think about yours.

The DNA Discovery People Can Make

On a personal note, I discovered that I had ancestors who lived in Moldova on my mother's side of the family once I took an AncestryDNA test. I had ancestors as far back as the early 1800s showing up in my results living in towns that exist today in the Republic of Moldova. My primary line, my great-grandfather, was actually born in Romania, and that's how I ended up eligible for Romanian citizenship myself. But others may discover something different in their own DNA results: an eligible ancestor born in Moldova, in a region that used to belong to Romania. That discovery may identify a Romanian citizenship route worth investigating. DNA results or ancestral geography do not establish eligibility by themselves.

Most People Don't Realize Moldova and Romania Share This History

Bessarabia, the region making up most of what is now the Republic of Moldova, was part of Greater Romania between 1918 and 1940. Many people with ancestors living there at the time held Romanian citizenship. After the Second World War, the Soviet Union absorbed the region into its own territory, and the people living there, through no fault of their own, lost that citizenship. As a result, Romania built a specific legal pathway for exactly this situation.

Article 11: The Part of Romanian Law Built Exactly for This

Certain descendants of former Romanian citizens from qualifying historical territories, including parts of Bessarabia and other regions that were part of Greater Romania in the interwar period, may have a route under Article 11. Great-grandchild-level cases may be possible. Citizenship status, dates, locality, circumstances of loss, and lineage still require documentary review before any of this becomes a real answer for a specific family.

Worth saying plainly, since this comes up: this has nothing to do with whether Romania and Moldova ever become one country again. That's a separate political question entirely. This citizenship pathway exists on its own, regardless of what happens with that conversation.

What to Actually Look For If This Might Be You

Have you taken a DNA test (AncestryDNA or 23andMe, for example), or do you know definitively from family history that you have a direct ancestor, a parent, grandparent, or great-grandparent, who was born in a town or region that's part of modern-day Moldova (Bessarabia), or modern-day Ukraine (Hertsa or northern Bukovina)? Do you know roughly when they were born, and whether that falls within or near the 1918 to 1940 window?

Tracing this kind of case can be more document-intensive than a straightforward Romanian case, since the records you need may sit in Moldovan, Romanian, or occasionally Ukrainian archives, depending on the exact location and how the borders shifted again after the Second World War. This is exactly where European Roots Consulting can bring real value, helping with the archival research, coordination, and genealogy involved, and getting the original documents into your hands even when that means navigating an active war zone, language barriers, underfunded government institutions, or damaged and lost records.

A Quick Word on the Romania-Moldova Unification Headlines, as of July 2026

Last updated: July 2026

You may have seen recent news that Romania's parliament took a step toward "unifying" with the Republic of Moldova. Worth being precise about what actually happened: Romania's lower house didn't vote in favor of it. The bill advanced only because nobody debated it before a procedural deadline expired, a technicality, not an endorsement. It still needs approval from the Romanian Senate, where the outcome is far from certain, and Romania's own government has issued a negative opinion on the proposal.

The Republic of Moldova hasn't taken any matching legislative step. That said, Moldovan President Maia Sandu did make real news of her own in January 2026, stating in an interview that if a referendum on unification were held, she would personally vote in favor of it. She was also clear in that same interview that joining the EU independently remains the more realistic path for Moldova right now, since current polling shows only about a third of Moldovans actually support unification itself.

So whatever happens with any of this, here's the actual takeaway: it changes nothing about the citizenship pathway described above. Article 11 doesn't need unification, a referendum, or any political outcome at all. It's already real, on its own, regardless of how that conversation unfolds, in either country.

Curious About Your Options?

Sometimes the best discovery is the one you least expected. DNA testing can surface useful clues, possible locations, and previously unknown relatives. It can point you toward records worth investigating, but it does not prove citizenship status or a legally qualifying family line. It could be as simple as a great-grandparent you knew nothing about, which is exactly what happened in my own family, for both Romania and Poland, that turns out to be the path to an EU passport.

If you have Moldovan ancestry, or family stories about a region you've never quite placed, or a DNA result naming towns you didn't recognize, it might be worth more than curiosity. The Roadmap Call is where that question actually gets answered. You can also take the quiz on this site if you'd rather start from scratch and see whether a Roadmap Call makes sense for you first.